In the eighty-five years from the department's founding in 1915 to the end of the century, 18 different persons headed the department in 25 distinct terms as chair. For an overview, see the graph of departmental chairs by terms of office.

Prof. Harris, whose field was diplomatic history, founded the department and remained as its head for thirteen years until his retirement in 1928. He was succeeded by Augustus Hatton (municipal government), who served twelve years until 1940. Hatton's successor, Kenneth Colegrove (Japanese politics), served nine years to 1949. Indeed, the department only had three different heads in the first 34 years of its existence.

Beginning in the 1950s, the department gravitated toward three year terms for the department chairmanship. The reduction in length of office and the standardization of terms might seem to reflect a shift from "headship" to "chairmanship"--with headship implying more authority. But University Archivist Patrick Quinn says that this is not so; neither the university nor the college ever legislated this distinction. Nevertheless, the graph suggests that three-year terms became the norm after 1950. Even the exceptions fit the norm:

• Richard Snyder, who was the dominant force in the department from 1956 to 1969, served two three-year terms from 1957-63 and then alternated with George Blanksten, who acted more or less as Snyder's alter ego during this period.
• Even during Blanksten's first term as chair, 1956-57, he was holding fort while Snyder was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto, California.
• In 1973-74, Kenneth Janda served one year to hold the fort for Herbert Jacob, who was also spending that year as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences.
• Janda only served two years on his own in 1980-82 because he had "done time" as chair earlier.

Although neither Snyder nor Blanksten served long uninterrupted terms like the first three departmental chairs, together they were the only chairs that the department had from 1956 to 1970. Snyder serving eight years over three terms, and Blanksten six years over four different terms.

Two factors figure into explaining the long terms served by departmental heads prior to the 1950s and the shorter terms later. First, there was increased democratization that occurred in the postwar era, especially as the faculty grew in size. Although chairs always have been named by the Dean and not elected by the department, faculty members had ways of registering their preferences to the dean. Second, as the faculty increased, so did the bureaucratic element of departmental administration, and faculty members began to look on being chair more as an oligation owed to the department than as a means of professional advancement.